This PSK lives in my EDC bag on the off chance I can't get to my GHB in the car. It is intended to get me through an unplanned night or two outdoors but be small enough that all its contents can fit in my pockets if need be. It should never need to stand alone (even my EDC and the other stuff in my EDC bag would help a lot), but it should give me a large advantage even if I have no other gear.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Last edited by airballrad on Sun Mar 22, 2009 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You might want to add matches to your AMK PSK. Even Doug Ritter, who designed it, suggests matches and the Katadyn tabs. If you want to, you can also take the complete contents of an AMK pocket medic kit and fit them into the PSK's bag then fold over the flap and secure it with Gorilla tape. (I've done it before I went to a PSK in a can.)

If you get adventurous with your AMK kits (groaning under the pun) you can cross breed an SOL with the PSK and slip in the smaller whistle and mirror from the SOL. Very incestuous I know. You could then use the matches from the SOL in your PSK if you wanted to. Otherwise REI stormproofs or BCBs are great, with Hurricane brand also good.

That might then free up room for an Aqua Mira or BCB purifier straw and allow you redundant water purification or else the ability to squeeze in a Platypus one liter bag. These allow a container to actually use the water tabs with to purify water.

Gatorfarmer wrote:You might want to add matches to your AMK PSK. Even Doug Ritter, who designed it, suggests matches and the Katadyn tabs. If you want to, you can also take the complete contents of an AMK pocket medic kit and fit them into the PSK's bag then fold over the flap and secure it with Gorilla tape. (I've done it before I went to a PSK in a can.)

If you get adventurous with your AMK kits (groaning under the pun) you can cross breed an SOL with the PSK and slip in the smaller whistle and mirror from the SOL. Very incestuous I know. You could then use the matches from the SOL in your PSK if you wanted to. Otherwise REI stormproofs or BCBs are great, with Hurricane brand also good.

That might then free up room for an Aqua Mira or BCB purifier straw and allow you redundant water purification or else the ability to squeeze in a Platypus one liter bag. These allow a container to actually use the water tabs with to purify water.

Thanks again for the excellent suggestions. I have not gotten around to getting an SOL yet (although I am up to 3 PSP's). For now I like that they all have the same contents, no matter which bag I have with me, but I am sure I will get more experimental with time.

I especially like your PSK case - what brand is that, and do you recall where you found it?

I would echo everything that Gatorfarmer mentioned, although I've recently replaced all my Platypus containers with these, as they store much flatter. Unfortunately these are too wide (6 5/8") to fit within your case, unless of course you are willing to fold it lengthwise across the zip closure.

I would also strongly suggest adding a mini Bic lighter. Spark-Lites, as well as the REI stormproof and BCB NATO Lifeboat matches are great (these are actually the only two brands of matches that I currently carry in my kits) although a Bic lighter will work 99.9% of the time, and is a lot quicker and easier to use.

This is a really nice kit! Looks like quality items all the way around. I strongly agree with Gatorfarmers suggestions especially about the water purification. If you do add purification tablets make sure you have a container to mix in... options include a ziplock freezer bag, an oven bag, a breast milk bag, or perhaps one of these http://www.bepreparedtosurvive.com/Aqua ... tainer.htm. Also I think you could probably fit a couple 4x4 gauze pads in there which would make your first aid kit more diverse.

>The case was meant to hold a small (laptop-size) portable hard drive.
Love these cases. They need to make them in more than just black and sometimes red and blue, though- color coding is a good thing.

>small cheap locking folder
You can do better than that!

Thoughts:
-A couple of small zip ties
-If you want a smaller mirror, try the one that County Comm has- very nice, I've played with one. Too big for the SOL, but for replacing the one in the PSP or something like this, just right.
-If you want a smaller whistle, or one that you can blow rather than toot, the little ACR. You should be able to find those if you are near the coast, look for life jacket items.
-Matches
-More water tabs
-An oven bag, or even just a quart freezer bag, for water
-Beef up the Pocket Medic, at least a pair of nitriles if it does't have a pair

"Even if it's only the handful of people I happen to meet on the street or in my home, I can still protect them with one sword."

When a man go no longer speak without malice intended lest he cause offense, that is when truth starts to die.

There are three kinds of man- Man the Toolmaker, Man the Tool User, and man the tool.

Paragon wrote: I especially like your PSK case - what brand is that, and do you recall where you found it?

Here it is. My wife got it from Amazon.com, I think. My eyes popped when I saw the price just now, but it was a gift (came with a hard drive that did not fit in it) so I didn't have to buy it. It is a good size for the purpose, and looks nothing like a tacticool survivalist kit.

Paragon wrote: I would also strongly suggest adding a mini Bic lighter. Spark-Lites, as well as the REI stormproof and BCB NATO Lifeboat matches are great (these are actually the only two brands of matches that I currently carry in my kits) although a Bic lighter will work 99.9% of the time, and is a lot quicker and easier to use.

I EDC a little BIC so unless I'm buck nekkid and grab this, the sparklite is just a fallback.

I just noticed something about your AMK PSK, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before. Did you put the golf pencil in or did it come that way? Mine, purchased last year, came with a crappy little thin pencil. It was great for packing easily, but the lead broke very easily. I still have it in my survival tin, but mainly just because it packs so easily.

ironraven wrote:>small cheap locking folder
You can do better than that!

Alright, alright! Cheap knife out, CRKT Mt. Shasta folder in.

Matches, water bags, and more FAK seem to be popular themes too, so I will have to look into adding these. As usual, I had to thing pretty full before I posted it, so it will be fun to try to cram more in.

Gatorfarmer wrote:I just noticed something about your AMK PSK, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before. Did you put the golf pencil in or did it come that way? Mine, purchased last year, came with a crappy little thin pencil. It was great for packing easily, but the lead broke very easily. I still have it in my survival tin, but mainly just because it packs so easily.

Funny thing about that. As stated on DR's page about this, it is mentioned that they might substitute a golf pencil for the skinny one in a given kit due to limited availability. This is the only one of my three PSPs to have it, and I was mildly bummed, since it does theoretically take up more room. Your experience makes me think it is a good thing, especially since this is the kit most likely to be used in an emergency situation.

airballrad wrote:
Funny thing about that. As stated on DR's page about this, it is mentioned that they might substitute a golf pencil for the skinny one in a given kit due to limited availability. This is the only one of my three PSPs to have it, and I was mildly bummed, since it does theoretically take up more room. Your experience makes me think it is a good thing, especially since this is the kit most likely to be used in an emergency situation.

Thanks, I'd somehow missed that on Ritter's page, or forgotten about it. If you want to replace your thin pencils in your other kits, I've found that the free ones sitting around in bins at Ikea stores work fairly well.

I now have a 2GB USB flash drive in this PSK. It has copies of all the digital pictures I have taken in the past 7 years (including all the pictures of my kids) and several older ones that I have scanned. It also contains an encrypted file with my insurance policies, bill payment records, and scans of all our passports, SS cards, birth certs, car titles, and marriage cert.

I also included USGS topo map files of the route from work to home, but they obviously aren't much use unless I can find a kinkos when the SHTF.

If you're putting a crypto file in there, make sure to use something like TrueCrypt thats cross platform, and keep executables/installers for every platform it supports on the drive. It'd be a shame to get to someplace with power and a computer only to find out it was a mac/linux box/OS2/whatever and had no way of mounting the disk.

MF'N TEAM LEADER

"Some people think that the best way to stop the leopard is to cut the horns off the gazelle. This, my friends, is insane."

crypto wrote:If you're putting a crypto file in there, make sure to use something like TrueCrypt thats cross platform, and keep executables/installers for every platform it supports on the drive. It'd be a shame to get to someplace with power and a computer only to find out it was a mac/linux box/OS2/whatever and had no way of mounting the disk.

Good call; it is TrueCrypt, and I do have the Win32 install file on there, but I do not have it for other platforms. Although frankly, if I find a machine still running OS/2, I really doubt it will have a USB port on it.

Thanks WW. I didn't update the pics recently enough, but I did replace the cheap folder with a CRKT Mt. Shasta that is about the same size. It is a very nice little knife, and has their LAWKS system on it so that there is a backup to the liner lock. ironraven yelled at me almost immediately for the cheap folder so I fixed that pretty quick.

Airballrad,
How do you like the AMK Pocket Medic FAK?
It seems like it's a nice little kit, but do you find that it's missing anything?

Does your BOB at least have: water, basic tools, fire, food, first-aid kit, and shelter?
"When planning, prepare for the most likely, and then the most catastrophic."raptor wrote: Being a gun collector does not make you a prepper.the_alias wrote: Murph has all the diplomacy of a North Korean warhead, but -he has- a valid point

I think it's a pretty good kit for the size; it's hard to add much more in the way of basic FA gear without bulking up a bit (Kerlix, anyone?). I actually have a bunch of Pocket Medic kits because they are relatively inexpensive, and because the tweezers are so awesome. Getting the splinter out of the 2-year-old's foot on the first try is priceless. I have most often used the tweezers, boo-boo strips, wound wipes, and ibuprofen.

Because this is for a PSK, keeping bulk down is a primary consideration, so this FAK really is for very basic needs, with a little help from the bandana and the clothes I'm wearing if I need to control moderate-major bleeding.

Cool. I'm either looking to buy one, or make one with similar contents for my PSK, so I wanted to hear what people thought of it.

Does your BOB at least have: water, basic tools, fire, food, first-aid kit, and shelter?
"When planning, prepare for the most likely, and then the most catastrophic."raptor wrote: Being a gun collector does not make you a prepper.the_alias wrote: Murph has all the diplomacy of a North Korean warhead, but -he has- a valid point

It's a little outside the scope of this kit, but I do have rolls in both my BOB and my EDC bag. Although come to think of it, I have a packet of MRE TP around here someplace; I'll throw that in. It'll make good tinder if I don't need it for its intended purpose.